


the face of your reflection

by laceeker



Category: Whitechapel (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen, Kent sees dead people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-05
Updated: 2012-11-05
Packaged: 2017-11-18 01:44:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laceeker/pseuds/laceeker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Kent is more alike his auntie and learned the accompanying rules by trial and error.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the face of your reflection

Pale bones slam against the surface, again and again, until they disappear into the depths of nothingness, retreating for another time. Or they motion him to follow. Moving slow and precise and with an ethereal grace like seaweed dancing alongside the currents of the oceans. Whenever he watches them for too long, he’ll feel a tug of strange seduction. An imminent urge ensues, one to dip his fingers into the reflecting surface and make contact.

He would not follow further, for the reason is simplistic. His name is not Frodo Baggins. There’s an undeniable difference between seduction and being hypnotized to trace along the lanterns to his own forgetfulness and later, death.

*

There are no open cases cluttered across his desk. The majority of the paperwork has already been filled in and filed. For once, no domestics are in need for the team’s time. Instead, boredom claims it by miles. A nondescript magazine Kent borrowed without asking from Riley is the only thing that holds him from inserting himself into the ‘perks of marrying’ discussion. He rather read more about preteens and their childish problems.

Kent shifts in his seat, trying for more comfort and failing. Four more hours to go if no desperate phone call will disrupt the now regular hours of the police officers. Four hours of glancing first at his naked wrist before remembering he placed his watch on his black notebook. The top of the notebook is of a plastic looking material and Kent eyes the eerie white in the reflection. It comes and goes, asking for him to lean in and listen and forget about those four tiny hours.

He shakes his head. Dirty preteens with squishy frogs in their hands and sticks in their hair are waiting to be read.

*

Night terrors were to be expected for Kent. His mum tells him that after they’d faded and gone forever. Tales of her sister are used as a working example. When you’re young enough to see moving shadows of the wrong colour in any reflecting object and old enough to feel it isn’t the norm, realisation hits hard. Screaming bloody murder or crying fat tears won’t make them disappear. Contradictorily, high emotions makes it—them—more forceful.

It slowly goes from night terrors to forced acceptance, followed by honest exhilaration. The ghosts, as his auntie had explained to him, are interesting. They can always be found in the corner of his eyes—there’s never the feeling of loneliness he’d otherwise experience.

*

Mansell, a few desks, over starts to sound agitated, a clear indicator Riley and Miles are riling him up. It forces Kent to glance up, only to halt at the shadows moving on his hardwood desk. It brushes against the top and unconsciously Kent mimics the movement. A few more seconds down the line he dips his index finger into the seemingly solid surface. Instantly a touch brushes him in the unsubstantial space. There are no other words for it how it feels. Light but pressing. Ugly but all the more alluring. A whisper travels up and out the space through the fine hairs on his body. He thinks he hears a man’s voice in his head, but he pulls his finger out of the intangibleness of it before it gets worse.

A sharp intake of breath tells Kent he isn’t the only one staring at his finger removing itself out of solid material. The slight smile drops from his face. Chandler is standing across of him, eyes set on his desk.

Don’t panic: the statement also applies to psychics—or whatever the hell he is labelled under. Douglas Adams was smart to leave it out, though. Who would believe in human psychics? Hitchhiking across the galaxy didn’t have room for that. So that is exactly what Kent does, or rather, doesn’t. Sure, he’s just as frozen in place as Chandler seems to be but he has the advantage here. Experience is on his side.

*

His auntie disappears on the day Kent graduates from the academy. His mum scolds at nothing and curses like a sailor while tears are streaming down her cheeks, asking empty spaces why she’d gone in. Kent grips the meaning there and then. His auntie had always given Kent space to discover the unwritten rules, and he’d learned some himself and had been taught others. Going in, a synonym for asking the ghost their stories. Going in completely after them is only an afterthought. One that is too late and fatal. Going behind the reflection might not be a problem to solve (mirrors are the strongest gateways), but remembering and finding the way back is.

*

“Something wrong, sir?” Kent asks still, knowing full well his DI will deny the impossible. Highly implausible murders are possible, defying the law of general relativity isn’t.

Chandler shakes his head after a moment of what Kent thinks is contemplation. To let it go, or not? That’s the question. “I thought... well, never mind what I thought,” he says. The look on his face is one Kent understands well. It reminds him of younger days in which carefulness was just another word in the dictionary and held no meaning for him yet.

It's not quite trepidation or confusion. There lies a certain uneasiness in Chandler’s expression. That of someone who's sure of what they saw, but it can't be comprehended with. Kent is a firm believer that Chandler does not trust tales from the beyond, even when he's been exposed to all those horrors in the past few years.

Kent only says, “Right.”

The DI closes the door softly behind him, and Kent sees the glass shake roughly after. The ghost, held together as a skeleton by the odd, white plasma, is powerful enough to reach out of reflection and brush Chandler idly on the shoulder. A show of comfort, or a murderous urge to grab and just pull. (Kent never discovered the difference between the two, it looks so similar all the time.) However, those who cannot see, will never experience. The most the ghost has done is probe at an undesired memory because Chandler stiffens and then swiftly hides behind his desk with the mountain of organized paperwork. His shoulders are tense and tiger balm is already being applied.

It piques Kent’s interest, like it always does. Ghosts that haunt have stories to tell, those that wander aimlessly never do. It is a shame the stories won’t ever acquire an audience.

Because by trial and error Kent learned the most important rule: asking is one’s own condemnation.


End file.
